“You’re exaggerating.” She glanced up at me, the genuine happiness in her eyes nearly blinding. Her cheeks were pink from the cool air and she kept looking around like absolutely everything was fascinating. “Why would we go back so soon? Have you seen the city you live in, Jesse? It’s marvelous. Truly.”
“Alright,” I said, sliding my hands into my pockets and falling into step beside her again. “We’re going to have to start heading back in about twenty minutes, though.”
“Why?”
“I have a surprise for you tonight.”
She turned so fast, I was afraid she might fall over. “A surprise? Have you been holding out on me, Jesse Westwood?”
God, I’m hating hearing my brother’s name on her lips more and more by the second.“I haven’t been holding out on you. I’ve had this planned since before we got back, but again, it’s asurprise.”
Her entire face transformed, her eyes widening and lighting up. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” I looked at her and changed my mind about heading back home first. “You know what? It’s not that far. Do you want to walk?”
“Yes, please,” she said without hesitating for a moment.
We turned toward the waterfront, but Eliza only realized where we were going when Chicago’s harbor was eventually stretching out ahead of us, the lights reflecting off the darkening water. She slowed, turning to face me with her jaw slack.
“Are we going on a boat?”
“Nope. It’s not a boat.” I led her instead to a dock where a medium-sized yacht waited for us. Soft lights glowed along the deck and candles flickered on a round table set for dinner. “See, it’s not really a boat. It’s a bit more than that.”
She stood on the dock beside me for a long moment, just gawking with her eyes sliding from bow to stern and back again. “Oh my God. Is this for us?”
I nodded, sweeping a hand out toward it. “After you.”
She stepped carefully onto the deck, looking around with wide eyes. The crew untied the ropes once I’d followed her on. “Bloody hell, Jesse. This is incredible. It’s beautiful.”
We drifted slowly away from the dock. A crew member waved us over to the table. As we sat down, Chicago’s skyline glittered around us and Eliza stared out at it, so openly awed that I couldn’t give a shit about the view.
As far as I was concerned, my view of her was the best in the house. Finally, after a few long minutes of just staring and blinking, she turned back to me. “I feel like I’m in a movie.”
“That’s good,” I said. “It’s kind of what I was aiming for.”
Somewhere deep in my chest, however, I already knew that if this was the closest I’d ever get to having a life with her, I was going to make every second of it unforgettable. Unfortunately, that meant that for me, the cruise was a terrible idea.
A spectacular, beautiful, deeply romantic, terrible idea. I couldn’t stop staring at her, noticing the way her golden hair drifted on the breeze and how she kept letting out these dreamy little sighs. Dinner was served as we cruised around the harbor, the crew coming and going with quiet efficiency.
Eliza looked more and more enchanted by the second, which made the situation significantly worse for my self-control. All I wanted to do was pull her into my arms, and I knew I fucking shouldn’t.
“This is absurd,” she said softly after turning back to me again. “The absolute best kind of insanity. I had no idea it was possible to do something like this right here in the city. Do you do it often?”
“Take women on candlelit yacht dinners?”
She chuckled. “Well, yes, but also not only that. Do you take these kinds of cruises often, you know, just for the experience?”
“No to both.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “You hesitated.”
“I was considering the phrasing.”
“That sounds suspicious.” She folded her arms on the table and looked directly at me. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“Those are pretty dangerous words.”
“Why?”
